About this blog

My name is Bill Hirt and I'm a candidate to be a Representative from the 48th district in the Washington State legislature. My candidacy stems from concern the legislature is not properly overseeing the WSDOT and Sound Transit East Link light rail program. I believe East Link will be a disaster for the entire eastside. ST will spend 5-6 billion on a transportation project that will increase, not decrease cross-lake congestion, violates federal environmental laws, devastates a beautiful part of residential Bellevue, creates havoc in Bellevue's central business district, and does absolutely nothing to alleviate congestion on 1-90 and 405. The only winners with East Link are the Associated Builders and Contractors of Western Washington and their labor unions.

This blog is an attempt to get more public awareness of these concerns. Many of the articles are from 3 years of failed efforts to persuade the Bellevue City Council, King County Council, east side legislators, media, and other organizations to stop this debacle. I have no illusions about being elected. My hope is voters from throughout the east side will read of my candidacy and visit this Web site. If they don't find them persuasive I know at least I tried.

Sunday, March 26, 2017

The East Link Debacle Continues

The March 14th Seattle
Times front page “Traffic Lab” article, “I-90 light-rail cost estimate takes a
$225 million jump” is just the latest chapter in the saga dealing with an East Link problem that began nearly 12 years ago.

East Link
was the first attempt to put light rail on a “floating bridge”. The
problem was assuring the “expansion joints” connecting the floating and fixed
portions of the bridge could withstand the loads from light rail trains. In Sept 2005, the WSDOT thought they'd demonstrated the
I-90 Bridge/light rail compatibility using flat bed trucks to simulate light
rail cars. They claimed the
“results of the test confirmed previous findings that the bridge can be
structurally retrofitted to carry the loads associated with the light rail
system under consideration, in addition to general traffic on the roadway”.

Apparently
the Washington Sate Legislature Joint Transportation Committee (JTC) was not
satisfied because they commissioned an independent review team (IRT) to evaluate
the bridge design with light rail. The results of the IRT study included
the following:

Several
issues could affect project cost estimates and schedules and therefore should
be resolved at the earliest states of the project design. One issue deals
with a required design element (LRT Expansion Joint Tract Bridge) has no
history of use on floating bridges, and therefore requires careful study and
testing in the early stages of the project.

Since many
of the issues require additional study, analysis, and design the IRT recommends
that an independent review or peer review panel be organized to provide
oversight throughout the LRT East Link design process.

In response
to these IRT concerns ST, three months later in the Dec 2008 DEIS included the
following statement regarding floating bridge/light rail compatibility:

The IRT
concluded that all issues identified as potentially affecting feasibility can
be addressed.

The U.S.
Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration had similar concerns
in a February 2009 letter responding to Sound Transits 2008 DEIS for the East
Link Project included the following:

“We do not
agree that there has been enough work done to justify the conclusion that it is
feasible to design a light rail track system to accommodate the movements of
the I-90 floating bridge” and “there is additional work to be done to determine
if it is feasible to design an expansion joint to accommodate light rail”.

Yet, two
years later the ST 2011 FEIS included the same confident response as the 2008
DEIS.

Finally in
2012, four years after the IRT recommended “careful study and testing in the
early stages of the project” ST signed a $28M (later $36M) contract with
Parsons Brinckerhoff (PB) to finish the design.It was
presumably their expansion joint design ST demonstrated at the Transportation
Technology Center in Pueblo, Colo. The tests, conducted during the summer
and fall of 2013, were initially reported to be a success with claims their
design passed with “flying colors”.

Later, in a
Jan 16th 2015 meeting with Bellevue City Council, ST claimed that,
while they had not completed the bridge design, they still didn’t think it was
a major problem. However they waited until August to announce plans
to spend another $20 million to complete the design.While the Sound Transit board was reportedly “disappointed”
with the recent design problems the WSDOT told them:

“We have not indentified any fatal flaws that would
prevent light rail from being installed on this corridor”

Yet nine
months later the March 24th 2016 Sound Transit board minutes
included the following regarding the East Link extension:

“In the I-90 corridor the system design is at 90% and
civil design is advancing to 90%. The independent review team (IRT)
identified 23 issues as part of the preliminary engineering. Twenty-two issues
have been closed and the staff is working to close the final issue.”

The fact that ST spent $38M on a design that initially passed with “flying colors” but
subsequently “crashed” suggests the problems are, if not “fatal”, surely
“serious”. That more effort was still needed nearly 9 months after signing the contract extension "suggests" the serious nature of the problem.

Now, twelve
months later and more than two years after ST told the Bellevue City Council
what wasn’t a major problem has required adding $225 million to the $486
million construction cost.Nearly
18 months after “disappointment” in August 2015 about spending $20 million
completing the design the board apparently had no problem spending more than
ten times that amount to fix the "flaws".

And the FHWA
apparently has yet to approve the design.It’s also not clear whether the FHWA has approved ST closing the I-90
center roadway without some demonstration the R-8A configuration, which add the
fourth lane to the outer roadways, can accommodate all cross lake vehicles; refuting their 2004 ROD conclusion the center roadway was still needed for
vehicles.

Assuming
East Link is allowed to proceed, the added $225 million simply adds to the cost
of a fatally flawed light rail system. The East Link share of the DSTT capacity
will provide about half the current peak bus capacity.That the only access to this limited
capacity for I-90 corridor commuters will be the South Bellevue P&R doing nothing
to ease the current congestion along that corridor. And East Link’s confiscation of center roadway will “likely”
lead to increased outer roadway congestion.ST refuses to add the thousands of parking stalls needed to
allow more commuters to use transit to even reach South Belllevue.

The bottom
line is the vast majority of cross-lake commuters will never be able to use
East Link leaving them the choice between paying very expensive fees on HOT
lane or frequent gridlock on GP lanes. And now they're going to be required to pay even more.

About Me

My last elective position was class president for 25 “class of ’57” seniors in Armstrong, Iowa. I received an MS in engineering at ISU, worked at Boeing for 36 years before retiring in 1998. My wife and I moved into our current home in Bellevue in 1967 where we raised two daughters. Three years of unsuccessful attempts to persuade BCC to block EL are available on “extended session” meeting minutes. Copies of many were sent to all the media outlets, legislators, and others to no avail. I’m hoping this Web site will convince east side residents to query their own legislators.